The portrait support extension is a Module. Installing a module is easy: Create a modules subdirectory in your data directory, and put the Perl file in there. It will be loaded automatically. See Portraits Support Extension Screenshot and DenotingAuthor on Community Wiki [1].

When writing, users can use [new] to toggle the background color between white and light grey. This is ideal for a conversation, since it makes it easy to spot where one contribution ends and the next one begins.

When users have defined a little portrait on their homepage, they can use [new:UserName] to toggle the background color and insert the portrait, their username, and a link to their homepage. This replaces traditional “signatures” on wikis.

A portrait is a small image of your face. You add it to your homepage by writing:

portrait:URL-to-image

Example:

portrait:http://emacswiki.org/alex/pics/alex-white-3.jpg

[new:UserName] is expanded automatically to [new:UserName:timestamp]. The timestamp is shown as a little popup when the mouse is placed on the portrait.

You can provide a timestamp yourself by writing [new:UserName:your timestamp]. You don’t have to write a real timestamp; just write a short comment instead.

When you write [new::], this will automatically fill in both your username (if known), and the timestamp.

You can customize the look of the entire thing using CSS.

CSS

div.color

For the color blocks that people say.

div.one, div.two

The color blocks alternate between these two classes.

div.portrait

For the portraits inside a div.color.

a.newauthor

For the link to the author’s homepage within a div.portrait.

img.portrait

For the image inside the a.newauthor.

div.portrait a.local

Inside a div.portrait, a.local is the link used for the author’s name.

CSS Example

The screenshot was produced using the CSS below. It assumes that you use 48x48 images and uses a minimal height of 105 pixel for a block (48 for the image, 2x10 for the padding, 2x10 for the margin is 88 pixels in total, plus a bit of extra arround the entire thing).